Bicycles on trains in Spain!

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However, if you do not have a bicycle bag and you do not intend on disassembling your bike:

In Spain, assembled bikes are not allowed on board AVE, Alvia, Altaria, or Avant trains.

In Spain, fully assembled bicycles are only allowed on board MD (Media Distancia) and other regional trains. There may be a limit of 2 bikes per train, so it always best to check locally. The cost to take an assembled bike on board these trains is approximately €3.

Unfortunately, there is no possible combination of these trains that could get you all the way from Santiago de Compostela to Santander within the span of a day, so you'd have to spend the night somewhere along the way.

If you need to keep your bike assembled, the connection would involve taking an MD train from Santiago to Palencia and then a regional (Regional Express) train from Palencia to Santander the following day. The only MD train from Santiago to Palencia departs in the evening, which is what makes it so that you can't connect to Santander the same day.

Generally, you would purchase tickets by searching a route under 'Book Train Tickets' on the homepage of our website, www.raileurope.com. However, the national rail network of Spain has temporarily ceased ticket sales for the MD trains from Santiago to Palencia. I'm not sure when you're planning on traveling, but you might want to check back at a later date regarding these trains.

In the meantime, tickets for the regional trains from Palencia to Santander are able to be purchased on our website. When you pull up the results of your Palencia-Santander search, they will be labeled accordingly as 'Regional' trains.

To get from Segovia to Santander with an assembled bike, you would first have to take a local Cercanias commuter train south to Madrid. At the station in Madrid (the Chamartin station), you would switch to regional train to Valladolid. In Valladolid, you would then switch to another regional train to Santander.

Please be advised that the Segovia-Madrid Cercanias trains might not allow you to take your bike on board during rush hour periods.

Tickets for the regional train connection from Madrid to Santander are able to be purchased on our website under 'Book Train Tickets'; however, tickets for the Cercanias trains from Segovia to Madrid can only be purchased locally when you're in Spain.

For the regional train connection from Madrid to Santander, you would just have to break up your search in Valladolid and then be sure to choose the regional trains. Therefore, you would do one search from Madrid to Valladolid and another search for connecting trains from Valladolid to Santander. When you pull up the results of these searches, the regional trains will be labeled accordingly.

If you'll have your bike in the bike bag, the connection points for these trips would all still be the same, but you wouldn't be restricted to taking regional or MD trains, and all the tickets could be purchased right on our website.

For tickets from Santiago de Compostela to Santander, you would just break up your search once in Palencia.

For tickets from Segovia to Santander, you would break up your search in Madrid and then in Valladolid.

You'd then be free to choose any train from these searches.